“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
What’s Going on at Higher Education
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News, Related Education Blogs /byThe Commonwealth released a mundane piece of annual debt disclosure a few days ago.
One interesting section, on page 11, is the number of budgeted workers in the state’s workforce, which has grown by almost 6,000 employees (from a base of 62,000) since June 2004.
Leading the charge? The Department of Higher Education, which has added almost 2,700 employees during that span, an increase of 22.5%. Yet, their enrollment levels have only increased by 6% at best during the span.
What gives?
Benefit blowout
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Healthcare, News /byYou are constantly berated for not saving money, folks. You overspend. You should put the money in bank accounts and let the government do all the borrowing to pay for the promises it makes to you. From John Goodman (and health blog HERE) is a neat packaging of Social Security and Medicare liabilities we are racking up… As John suggested in his email, read and weep.
*These calculations ignore the existence of the trust fund, estimated at a little more than $2 trillion.
Source: Social Security/Medicare Trustees Reports 2008
Lottery Questions
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byInterested in how your town fares under the Lottery — take a look here: Lottery Workbook
This spreadsheet tells you how much your town gets from the lottery relative to the sales of lottery tickets in the community. It also calculates how much people win from those tickets and adds it into the amount of aid to give another angle to the notion of return on investment.
Feel free to comment on tweaks, mistakes, or observations from the data.